Friday, December 28, 2012

The son of a silent film star, Harry Carey Jr. was
thought to be the last surviving member of director Ford's legendary acting
company and appeared in several classic westerns.

By Dennis McLellan, Special to The Los Angeles Times

Harry Carey Jr., a venerable character actor who was
believed to be the last surviving member of director John Ford's legendary
western stock company, died Thursday. He was 91.

Carey, whose career spanned more than 50 years and
included such Ford classics as "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and
"The Searchers," died of natural causes in Santa Barbara, said
Melinda Carey, a daughter.

"In recent years, he became kind of the living
historian of the modern era," film critic Leonard Maltin told The Times on
Friday. "He wrote a very good book, 'Company of Heroes,' and kept working
into his 80s.

"He would get hired on films by young directors who
just wanted to work with him, to be one step away from the legends,"
Maltin said. "Some hired him to just hear his stories between takes."

Director Joe Dante, who used Carey in his 1984
comic-fantasy "Gremlins," told The Times in 2003: "You got a lot
of free movie history when you cast him."

The son of silent-film western star Harry Carey Sr. and
his actress wife, Olive, Carey made more than 100 films. They included
"Red River," "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef," "Big
Jake," "Cahill U.S. Marshal," "Nickelodeon," "The
Long Riders," "Mask" and "The Whales of August". In
one of his final films, 1993's "Tombstone," he played a marshal who
gets shot down.

The red-haired, boyishly handsome Carey lacked the
screen-dominating star quality of his longtime pal, John Wayne, with whom he
appeared in nearly a dozen films. Instead, Carey made his mark as a character
actor whose work in westerns bore an authenticity unmatched by most actors: He
was considered one of Hollywood's best horsemen.

That was amply illustrated in 1950's "Rio
Grande," for which he and cowboy-turned-character actor Ben Johnson
learned to ride two horses while standing up, with one foot on the back of each
horse.

His other Ford film credits include "3
Godfathers," "Wagon Master," "The Long Gray Line,"
"Mister Roberts," "Two Rode Together" and "Cheyenne
Autumn."

Carey also appeared in dozens of television shows, most
of them westerns such as "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza," "Have
Gun-Will Travel," "The Rifleman" and "Branded." He
also portrayed the boys' ranch counselor in the popular "Spin and Marty"
serials on "The Mickey Mouse Club" in the 1950s.

According to Dante, Carey's best role was in Ford's 1950
western "Wagon Master," in which Carey and Johnson co-starred as
horse traders who join a Mormon wagon train.

"Harry was a straight-arrow, realistic person on the
screen," said Dante. "It didn't seem like he was acting. He really
had an aw-shucks quality."

He was born Henry George Carey on May 16, 1921, on his
father's ranch north of Saugus and a 45-minute drive to Universal Studios,
where Harry Sr. made westerns in the 1910s and 1920s. More than two dozen were
directed by John Ford, who became a close family friend.

When Carey was born, his father, Ford and then-New York
City Mayor Jimmy Walker awaited the baby's arrival by drinking a whiskey named
Melwood.

From then on, as Carey wrote in his 1994 memoir,
"Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock
Company": "Every time Ford saw me with my father he'd say,
'Mellllwoodâ€¦li'llll Mellllwood,' alluding to how drunk he and my dad were
that night at the ranch."

The young Carey graduated from the Black-Foxe Military
Institute in Hollywood in the late 1930s, studied voice and made his stage
debut, with his father, in summer stock in Maine.

During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific
theater but ended up working in Washington on Navy training and propaganda
films for Ford, then a naval officer.

In 1944, Carey married Marilyn Fix, daughter of character
actor Paul Fix.

After the war, Carey tried but failed to launch a singing
career and followed his father into the movies with a small role as a cowboy in
the B-movie "Rolling Home" (1946).

"When he went into the movies, everybody suggested
he go by Harry Carey Jr., but I think he regretted that forever," his
daughter said. "He just wanted to be Dobe, the nickname he always went
by," and one that his father gave him because his red hair was the color
of the ranch house's adobe bricks.

John Wayne recommended the fledgling actor for the role of
a cowboy who is killed in a cattle stampede in the 1948 Howard Hawks' classic
"Red River." Shot in 1947, it also featured the elder Carey in his
final role. He died the same year at 69.

When Ford made "3 Godfathers," he cast Harry
Jr. as one of the leads, the Abilene Kid, and dedicated the film to the Harry
Sr. The film tells the story of three desperadoes â€” played by Wayne, Pedro
Armendariz and Carey â€” who come upon a dying mother in the desert and risk
their lives to bring her newborn baby to safety.

Before leaving for filming in Death Valley, Ford told
Carey, "You're going to hate me when this picture is over, but you're
going to give a great performance."

Ford, who was well-known for his sadistic behavior toward
actors in his films, showed Carey no mercy. "I don't remember the Old Man
being nice to me for one whole day during location shooting in Death
Valley," Carey wrote in his book. "He was bearable or unbearable â€”
never nice."

Once, when Carey looked in the wrong direction during a
scene, Ford threw a jagged, cantaloupe-sized rock at his face. Carey ducked.
"If it had hit me in the head it would have killed me," he said in an
interview years later.

Carey's death scene, filmed when it was 126 degrees in
the shade, proved particularly rough. Displeased with Carey's performance, Ford
cussed him out and left Carey to bake in the sun for 30 minutes.

When Ford returned, a near-delirious Carey delivered his
death speech, his mouth so dry he couldn't swallow and his voice resembling
that of a dying man as he croaked out his lines.

"Why didn't you do that the first time?" a
grinning Ford told Carey. "See how easy it was? You done good! That's a
wrap!"

Carey is survived by his wife, Marilyn; daughters Melinda
and Lily; son Tom; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Cliff Osmond passed away on the afternoon of December
22nd, 2012 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was at home,
surrounded by his loving family: wife Gretchen, daughter Mishi, her husband
Jorge and their daughter, Sophia, and Cliff's son, Eric. Gretchen told me that
he was at peace, quoting Walt Whitman as he departed.

Cliff's funeral will be a private affair for the family.
In the coming weeks there will be a public memorial and celebration of Cliff's
life and career. Announcements about the memorial will be made here and on
Cliff's Facebook page.

Cliff's family asks that instead of sending flowers you
kindly consider making a donation to a charity that provides funding to those
seeking a cure for pancreatic cancer.

Gerry Anderson, creator of the Thunderbirds and Joe 90
puppet superhero TV shows, has died at the age of 83, his son has announced.

Anderson had been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease
since early 2010, and his condition had worsened in the past six months, Jamie
Anderson said.

Gerry Anderson also created Stingray and Captain Scarlet
and the Mysterons.

Thunderbirds was filmed on Slough Trading Estate in
Berkshire and was first broadcast in 1965.

Jamie Anderson announced the news on his website, saying
his father had died peacefully in his sleep at noon on Wednesday.

"Gerry was diagnosed with mixed dementia two years
ago and his condition worsened quite dramatically over the past six months.

"Having already decided with his family on a care
home for himself earlier this year, he moved in there in October," Jamie
Anderson said.

Gerry Anderson spoke publicly about his disease in June
2012.

Speaking on BBC Berkshire he said: "I don't think I
realized at all. It was my wife Mary who began to notice that I would do
something quite daft like putting the kettle in the sink and waiting for it to
boil."

He was a celebrity ambassador for The Alzheimer's
Society.

His other creations included UFO, Space: 1999, Supercar
and Fireball XL5.

Anderson, who lived in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire,
began his career studying fibrous plastering, but had to give it up when it
gave him dermatitis.

Speaking in January 2011, Gerry Anderson said he felt
"humbled" by his success

After a spell in photographic portrait work, a job in
Gainsborough films and time spent in air traffic control, he set up AP Films
with some friends.

Commissions were few however, so he responded eagerly to
the opportunity to make a puppet series called The Adventures of Twizzle in
1956. It was eight years before Thunderbirds came into being on ITV.

Thunderbirds marked the career apex for Gerry and his
wife Sylvia, who had honed their supermarionation technique on Fireball XL5 and
Stingray.

The story revolves around International Rescue, a
futuristic emergency service manned by the Tracy family, often assisted by Lady
Penelope - voiced by Mrs Anderson - and her butler, Parker.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Charles Durning, the two-time Oscar nominee who was
dubbed the king of the character actors for his skill in playing everything
from a Nazi colonel to the pope, died Monday at his home in New York City. He
was 89.

Durning's longtime agent and friend Judith Moss told The
Associated Press that he died Monday of natural causes in his home in the
borough of Manhattan.

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public
officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered
by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically
corrupt governor in 1982's "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be
so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing
Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his
first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after "Best Little Whorehouse,"
Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi
officer in Mel Brooks' "To Be or Not to Be." He was also nominated
for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's "Dog Day
Afternoon."

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991
for his portrayal of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald in the TV film
"The Kennedys of Massachusetts" and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in
the Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first
big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York
Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously,
through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the
Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play "That Championship Season" in
1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the
following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert
Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy "The Sting."

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the
would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in
"Tootsie;" the infamous seller of frog legs in "The Muppet
Movie;" and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy." He
played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope
in the TV film "I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII."

"I never turned down anything and never argued with
any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when
he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer
as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series "The Cop
and the Kid" (1975), "Eye to Eye" (1985) and "First
Monday" (2002) as well as the four-season "Evening Shade" in the
1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy,"
he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the
mail, and when I come back I'll say, 'Any calls for me?'"

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on
which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10
children in 1923, in Highland Falls, New York, a town near West Point. His
father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War
I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point
cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World
War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at
Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to
survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was
bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured
in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

In later years, he refused to discuss the military
service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer
in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning
was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to
smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counselor told him he had no talent for
art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing
"King Kong" and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he
wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on
a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory. When he finally found work as a
burlesque theater usher in Buffalo, New York, he studied the comedians'
routines, and when one of them showed up too drunk to go on one night, he took
his place.

He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as
heard the audience laughing. He told the AP in 2008 that he had no plans to
stop working.

"They're going to carry me out, if I go," he
said.

Durning and his first wife had three children before
divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann
Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and
Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at
Arlington National Cemetery.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.